by Drew Cordell
“We’ll flag the coordinates and come back when we log back in later.” Brandon didn’t sound confident the plan would work out well for us. The freighter wasn’t going anywhere with the bridge in its current condition, but this entire region would be swarming with pirates if the captain got word out to any allies that hadn’t crossed our path already.
The situation was made worse by the fact that we hadn't seen the cargo bays or manifests, and the computer consoles that would store that information were encrypted with software in a language our AI barely understood. We’d have to come back blind, and the safest thing to do would be to assume most of the cargo and salvageable loot would be relatively worthless. The Virodeshian freighter and the pirate frigate were where the real value was, but they wouldn't put a single credit in our pockets until we could have them towed back to a station.
We were passing over the aftermath of the battle directly outside of the freighter’s bridge now, slowing our space flight to observe the bridge up close. I felt uneasy—like something was wrong. There was something eerily creepy about bodies floating in space—the way they rested in suspended motion. The slimy skin of the Virodeshians had hardened in a thin layer of sparkling frost, prismatic and diamond-like in the glimmering sunlight of a distant red star. I suppressed a shiver that the pirate captain wasn’t amongst their numbers, but the captain’s frigate was still docked on the side of the freighter, and it wasn’t jamming the signals of Exowurm.
“Well, Exowurm isn’t jammed anymore, so the pirates either overworked their frigate’s reactor, or the automatic shutoff timer triggered and no one is on the ship to flip it back on,” I said, trying to keep the growing frustration from bleeding into my voice. It wasn’t Brandon’s fault we’d picked up a fake contract—I’d been the one to jump all over it, going for what had seemed like a lucrative opportunity at a minimal time investment for someone with a ship like mine. We’d just have to be more careful in screening contracts going forward.
Brandon nodded, dipping his head inside his helmet. “Let’s hope nothing is left to fly the frigate.”
As we neared Exowurm, I checked the timer for our alarm, pulling it up in the corner of my vision. 12 minutes. It would be enough time to jump to safety before logging out of Eternity Online.
Players could log out anytime they wanted, but not during combat, and not with hostile enemies in proximity without their characters turning into an AI-controlled character that would act on preset directives until it was safe for a full exit. There were more drawbacks than benefits to the system though, and for most, it was best to avoid triggering the feature entirely. I had yet to test my AI’s capabilities and had no intention of doing it today.
I had to admit, Exowurm looked great—even better since it was all mine and we hadn’t died a tragic death from a stupid plan. She was a gorgeous interceptor—45 meters in length with a cozy two-person flight cabin on top of her sleek, slightly-curved geometric frame. The exterior was painted matte black but had several scuffs and burns where the shiny titanium alloy frame bled through from beneath. Powerful swivel turrets with multiple weapon systems capped the sides, top, and bottom of the ship, giving the pyramid-like build a menacing, no-nonsense look.
I braced for impact with the hull of my ship, decelerating and reaching out with two gloved hands. I caught the handrail on the bottom airlock, pulling myself to a gentle stop while Brandon impacted next to me with limited grace. There was no need to use the external keypad for boarding—a quick mental command with my AIVO initiated the procedure to open the exterior airlock. It was a quick process and took less than 10 seconds until we were inside the ship.
Inside Exowurm, the artificial gravity was much better than what we worked with in real life on a daily basis. The transition from null to artificial gravity was seamless and approximated one standard G with nothing short of perfection. I dematerialized my helmet, eager to feel less restriction and claustrophobia after my previous brush with digital death that had felt a little too real for my taste.
Our heavy boots thudded as we ran across the narrow hallway connecting the various rooms inside the ship. “Activate engines and primary jump drive. Charge central capacitor and prepare to route the power to the jump drive,” I ordered the ship’s AI, initiating the process before we were even in our seats in the flight cabin. There was no time to waste, and being able to safely log out was our primary concern.
“You should ask it nicely,” Brandon suggested, following close behind me as we ran. “It’s a sentient being, you know.”
I smirked at that. “Ha, maybe if we upgrade to one of those 9th or 10th gen AI nodes, I will. Our current AI has the personality and moral character of an asteroid.”
The ship’s AI, however objective and impersonal, could handle most things for us, including the acceleration and massive energy expenditure necessary to jump huge distances almost instantaneously. In a region of the game universe so remote, it was a lot more practical than using the warp drive for FTL travel, provided we had the jump fuel to burn.
Time permitting, I wanted to do a quick pass of the wreckage before we left, to see if the pirate captain’s body had somehow been displaced farther away or had caught on something in the dormant bridge of the freighter when the viewport blew out. I pulled up the camera feed of the freighter as Brandon and I moved through Exowurm. A field of debris floated in front of the massive ship, and the lights in the bridge had gone out sometime during our return EVA to Exowurm. Our scanners were showing that the freighter’s bridge was suffering catastrophic power failure.
Fighting off an uneasy feeling, Brandon and I jumped into the vertical cylindrical chamber that allowed us to quickly move between the three levels in our ship without the need of an elevator. There was a ladder in the tube, but there also wasn’t gravity in the narrow space when everything was functioning properly, allowing us to kick off the ground and float to the top level. I hovered for a moment, bracing myself on the ceiling of the tube before kicking off the back wall and moving to my flight chair in Exowurm’s cabin, once again subject to the force of gravity.
Once seated and strapped into the comfortable flight chair, I oriented Exowurm with my right joystick, deftly rolling the ship while pulling out of the lazy orbit we had set around the center of the massive freighter. The scrap alone from such a big starship would fill our pockets with credits, and I was eager to score the haul. I felt anxiety and anger rise again at the thought that this wealth wasn’t ours yet despite an inventive and narrow victory against superior enemies.
I still had two after-combat notifications I needed to read, but they could wait until the next time I logged in. I wasn’t excited to see how much the combat encounter had cost us. I didn’t want to mess with my character sheet, but there was a distinct possibility we had gained a lot of XP from the encounter, especially from the elite kills. I would have gotten an overlay notification on my AIVO if I leveled up my character or one of my abilities or skills, but progress was progress and I would take all I could get.
“You’ve got the coordinates flagged, right?” I asked, turning on the powerful OLED high-beam lights and orienting them with the auxiliary joystick I gripped in my left hand.
Brandon nodded, assisting me and toggling the switches to some of Exowurm’s search & rescue features that ironically excelled at finishing the grim task of merciless extermination in the aftermath of space battle. “Yeah. Clocked it a few klicks out just in case the area is hot when we come back.”
Exowurm could jump in with guns blazing, but good scanners would be able to detect our impending arrival well before we could arrive if we positioned the arrival point too far away. Three klicks out would give us the best chance to avoid that and would put us right under the noses of any new enemies—hopefully before they even knew what hit them.
The hard white light of Exowurm’s search beams illuminated the ghostly bridge of the Virodeshian freighter with perfect clarity, casting dark, sunken shadows on the back wall from all
the floating debris. The pirate captain, wherever it was, wasn’t inside the remnants of the freighter’s bridge. I checked our timer again. Three minutes. For now, there was nothing more we could do.
Exowurm’s AI overlaid graphics and information on top of the glass-like viewport in front of us, not doing anything to comfort my unease from the situation. “All right, Brandon. Nice job today. Sorry about the fake contract.”
Brandon shrugged. “Not your fault. I’d say we learned a valuable lesson today.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” I asked, toggling the search beams off and returning flight controls to my auxiliary joystick.
“That your stupid plans can actually work.” Brandon laughed, leaning back and relaxing in his flight chair.
6
I initiated the jump away from the now-crippled Virodeshian freighter, safely logging out and removing our characters and ship from the game world.
I felt like I always did after logging out of Eternity Online: rested and alert—no different than if I had slept naturally for a full eight and a half hours. The neural interface equipment we used let people play in their sleep. An alarming number of people across the galaxy were now playing full-time and taking up semi-permanent residency within the game in hopes of securing a better life in the Eternity System—one free from the impending doom of our isolated sect of humanity. The contractors working on Tiyvan IV were no exception, but Brandon and I were the only ones on our moon who weren’t playing under Dalthaxia’s flag.
Next time we logged in to Eternity Online, Brandon and I would be able to return to the freighter’s wreckage and hopefully secure it for a massive win. I was hoping for a new blaster pistol soon, and I knew Brandon had his eye on some new planetary armor which had to be custom-crafted to fit his bulky frame. If all went well, we’d be able to buy a lot more than that. We were dealing with real wealth that we’d be able to transfer out of Eternity Online and into our personal real-world bank accounts.
Checking the datapad on the nightstand next to my bed, I groaned. I had a new message from Stacy Vex. I begrudgingly opened it, unaware of how much it would affect the rest of my day.
The workday was painfully slow. Something was wrong with the northern habitation (HAB) unit, that much was apparent from the start. While it technically wasn’t my job, we had to sit around waiting until Chavez could get the weird error cleared. Company policy deemed we all were stuck in our bubbles until the error was resolved and verified with the expensive AI Overmind node orbiting our moon. After that, everything that fell under my responsibility seemed to have problems which required my attention. Aside from the weird software bugs that the Overmind would work on patching, almost everything else was on me to fix during a typical shift.
As the cart drove me and 30 of my colleagues away from the worksite and to our residency building, I contemplated the life choices that had led me here. Sure, I had a pretty good job with Rollings Mining Company, but their monolithic business practices were outdated before I was born.
In general terms, the objective of mining hadn’t changed since it was discovered on Earth in the Sol System thousands of years ago: dig into something relatively worthless, extract something else valuable, then get people like me to do it so there was more profit. But the job had decent pay with some interesting benefits, if you didn’t mind the scenery consisting only of dusty white rock surrounded by perpetual and infinite darkness.
Tiyvan was a rogue planet, and it, along with all its natural satellites, had escaped the orbit of whatever long-dead star had once hosted it. But something no less than a class-2 black hole had slowed its escape velocity. Now, it was drifting across the empty void of space, trundling farther and farther away from the Eternity System. In thousands and thousands of years, Tiyvan might eventually pass through another, unknown solar system. Some people thought that Tiyvan might be a potential colonization location for the losing faction of the Eternity War, but I knew better. It was freezing, perpetually dark, and insanely expensive to maintain the upkeep for a relatively small operation like ours.
Fortunately, my day job didn’t require me to swing a PlasmaAx or haul heavy equipment by hand, even if weight was highly subjective on a low-mass moon like Tiyvan IV. I was a drone operator and technician, which technically placed me second only to the Foreman in the hierarchy of command on a typical shift. When one of the Wurms broke down (the massive machines drilling deep into Tiyvan IV) I was tasked with the repairs, utilizing an arsenal of versatile drones to tackle the job.
Inside my bubble, a modified lightweight EVA suit, I could mute out the sounds of my surroundings, at least as we passed through the long trenches on the dark surface with no atmosphere. The mining EVA suit was a lot more comfortable than the one I wore in Eternity Online, and it was designed for all-day wear.
There was the normal chatter of the 30-minute cart ride back from the main mining pit. That was nothing new, but the crew on my shift didn’t seem to want to discuss the recent expiration of a 500-year-old treaty that had more or less dictated the decay of this region of the galaxy. Now, there was no certainty for our futures—a future we now had a direct stake in influencing.
Eternity Online was designed to keep at least part of humanity alive. I understood why most of my coworkers didn’t want to talk about it. They had families who weren’t working on government-sanctioned contracts, they had people close to them who might not make it on the exodus charter if Dalthaxia lost the war—the unlucky remainder. I didn’t have anything or anyone like that, I only had Stacy. Only that wasn’t true, I had to remind myself. She hadn’t been mine for a long time, and that had been my choice.
The Eternity Online War was everything. Our system wouldn't survive another real war, and the two major factions were bitter enemies. Years of grinding diplomacy wouldn't make a difference if there was no way to make the equation work. For all we knew, we were the last pocket of humanity alive in the entire galaxy.
The planets and stations of the Eternity System were overpopulated, starved of resources, and dying. Population control efforts put into place well before I was born had slowed our nosedive toward starvation, but we didn’t have much time left. The golden age technology that brought us to our region of the galaxy was long gone—destroyed in a 500-year old war between Dalthaxia and Salgon that had almost ended it all. The entire Eternity System would die if roughly half of its occupants weren't displaced by either mass-exodus or a much darker, simpler solution. This digital war was supposed to settle the issue for good and keep our sect of humanity alive by deciding which faction would get to stay, and which would have to leave. There would be exceptions. Wealth was wealth, and certain individuals with enough of it would be less affected by the war than the rest of us, regardless of which side they were on.
“You’ve been really quiet, Kyle,” Brandon said, looking at me from across the cart while it bounced over the flat, well-worn path pressed into the landscape of the bleak moon. We had discussed the dangerous encounter we had completed in Eternity Online throughout the workday when we were able to speak in private, but I still hadn’t told him about the message I’d received from Stacy that morning.
I looked up to acknowledge him. “A lot on my mind,” I said, connecting to a private chat lobby with him effortlessly. Overmind and our internal neural net were sophisticated enough to process basic mental commands—some people, myself included, had higher-quality connections to the system and could execute more complex actions without verbal commands or the press of a button. Hell, my ability to interface so well with Overmind and most of our gear gave me an edge over a lot of my colleagues in this industry while giving Rollings incentive to nudge me toward my current career path as a drone operator. I could handle interfacing with four or five small drones at once, more or less making them a natural extension of my body.
“Stacy again?” he asked, a concerned look forming on his face, visible through the tintless visor of his bubble.
I laughed, but there was no humo
r, only tired disappointment. “Among other things. Got a message from her last night, I can’t stop thinking about it. She’s saying she knows about a loophole in the Eternity Treaty, some way to secure massive wealth if I help her with a job in Eternity Online.”
“The only way she’d know something like that is if she’s banging some dude in the Dalthaxian Government!” Chad shouted.
“Dammit, Chad! You’re not supposed to be on our channel. Hold on, Kyle. Sorry about that.”
I could picture Chad’s sinister grin as he said his next words even if I couldn’t see his face since he had turned off his interior helmet lights along the way. “Oh, are you talking about the girl with the big—”
Brandon hit Chad, who was laughing to himself in the silence of his own bubble now. Chad was just messing around, but either way, I wasn’t in the mood for it. So far, he hadn’t done enough for me to escalate the situation and break the 100+ standard days we’d gone without a mental breakdown, alcohol-related incident, or petty brawl. As a company division, that was something to be proud of and put us well past the standard distribution of a normal Rollings Mining Company unit.
“What were you saying, Brandon?” I asked, resuming the conversation. I bit the rubber nipple in my helmet, sucking out a stream of icy water from my suit’s reservoir.
He took a deep breath, sighing in his microphone before going silent. “Do you want me to tell you what you want to hear or what you need to hear?”
“What I need to hear,” I said. There was no need to consider, I needed honest advice.
“It wouldn’t be the first time she lied to try to get you back to Dalthaxia or Salgon. And again, I haven’t met her, but it seems to me like she’s in a situation that’s not so great and she wants you to throw her a lifeline. We’re young enough, but we both know why you came here. You’re damn good at what you do, but there are a lot of better places you could be doing it that aren’t so… remote. You haven’t come right out and said it, but I think you came here to get away from her. Either way, I don’t think you should be rushing back, especially with all of the real-world tension from the Eternity War. For the time being, this beautiful moon of ours is the best place we can be.”
